NewLook 6774 - Yellow linen dress

This pattern was picked specifically for this yellow linen border print. I went looking for a dress pattern with a fairly straight bottom and somewhat simple top. My favorite was the view with the pockets and flutters on the shoulder straps. But lately I have noticed that while I'm drawn to these younger styles, I feel childish when I'm wearing them. So I went with a straight front, no flutters and no pockets. (The pockets would have just been in the way, as it turned out.)

This gorgeous yellow linen with embroidered floral border was purchased last year at either Hancock's or JoAnn's - I can't remember which. For all my love of yellow, I really don't own that many garments that feature it as the main color. After it was 90% completed, I was not happy with how long the skirt was. Not wanting to lose any of the embroidery at the bottom, I created 3 tucks which are 3/8" in length, and they pulled the skirt up to the desired length. I think they turned out to be a really interesting design element, and gives this simple dress a bit more detail.

The front and back gathers were spaced out evenly around the waist inset to avoid any poofy pregnant look, a necessity with this limited draping fabric.

As you can see from the tiny line drawing, I did make some changes to the back. Since I wanted to space out the back gathers more, having a zipper right through the middle was going to be a problem. This was easily solved by cutting all the back pieces on a fold and moving the zipper to the side seam.


Here's the invisible zipper at the left side seam. I took lots of pictures when I put it in for a zipper tutorial. I'll try to put that together and get it posted in the next few days.

The line drawing would have you believe there is some sort of banding along the top of this design. It turned out to be topstitching. It bothers me to have only one tiny bit of topstitching on a garment, plus I didn't want to have to interface the entire bodice when I only needed stability along the very top. Adding a band was simple enough, and I was sure to make it the same width as the shoulder straps.

The banding along the inside was the one to get the interfacing, as you can see in this next picture. Since I was using linen, I added a skirt lining to avoid having a baggy bottom when wearing it. The lining is inexpensive cotton/poly broadcloth from Hancock's. I wanted to be able to wash this dress and finished all of the exposed seams in the skirt.

I love it!